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Aver Informatics Raises $8.5 Million

Aver Informatics has raised $8.5 million from corporate investors. The Series A funding round was led by Drive Capital and GE Ventures.

The new money will speed company growth, and expand Aver’s engineering and sales groups.

Looking back, initial seed funding for Aver was $175,000 from Al Zeise, CEO of ZyQuest. The company then raised $1.3 million, in a round led by angel investor Tom Shannon, the Milwaukee Business Journal said.

Recently, the company also announced it has University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Molina Healthcare among its new customers. Before that, some 15 customers were using Aver Informatics’ software, and they saved 10 percent to 50 percent on payments for treatments across patients, TechCrunch reported.

"Today is a pivotal moment for us that will help transform the healthcare reimbursement process, providing higher quality care to patients at a substantially lower cost to payers," Kurt Brenkus, CEO of Aver Informatics, said in a statement.

In addition, Aver Informatics has been named by GE and StartUp Health to be in their entrepreneur program.

"We're thrilled to partner with GE Ventures to support and accelerate Aver's growth," Mark Kvamme, co-founder of Drive Capital, added in the statement. "Kurt and his team are building a game-changing product that we think will revolutionize the healthcare payments landscape, the exact type of real-world solution that we've come to expect from innovative entrepreneurs in the Midwest."

Aver Informatics, which provides billing management software, analyzes data via claims systems. It then comes up with bundles – known as "episodes of care" – to create protocols for patient treatment and lessen services. That changes fee for service into episodic care, which leads to lower costs for insurance companies, more efficiency for medical providers and makes payments simpler for patients, the company said.

"We are always seeking to partner with companies that provide practical solutions that drive down the costs for all of us to be healthy," Jason Sibley, director of GE Ventures Healthcare, explained in the statement. "It is important for companies to provide affordable and competitive healthcare benefits to employees. We are impressed with Aver's use of data exploration to navigate the healthcare system from not just a business point of view, but the consumer and patient view as well."

Looking at the big picture, U.S. healthcare spending is predicted to total one-quarter of the economy by 2022, TechCrunch reported. But, Big Data analytics can save a significant amount of money for health insurance companies and patients.